1. Field of the Invention
The teachings are directed to safety systems for trucks and motorized vehicles that mitigate the risk of backover accidents.
2. Description of the State-of-the-Art
Many construction works and pedestrians are killed or seriously injured annually by trucks and other motorized vehicles. One of the principal modalities of these occurrences is an individual being struck and crushed by the rear wheels while the truck or motorized vehicle is backing up.
Backovers can occur either on a public roadway or not on a public roadway, i.e., in a driveway or in a parking lot. The former are called traffic backovers and the latter nontraffic backovers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) existing Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and National Automotive Sampling System—General Estimates System (NASS-GES) provide information regarding backing crashes that occur on public trafficways. However, data regarding nontraffic backovers (and other backing crashes), those which occur on private roads, driveways, and parking lots, have not routinely been collected by NHTSA. In response to SAFETEA-LU Sections 2012 and 10305 and Section 2(f) of the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007, NHTSA developed the Not in Traffic Surveillance (NiTS) system to collect information about all nontraffic crashes, including nontraffic backover crashes. Combining the 221 NiTS backover fatalities with the annual average of 71 FARS backover fatalities produces an estimate of 292 total annual backover fatalities. The estimated 14,000 NiTS backover injuries when combined with the 4,000 NASS-GES backover injuries produces an estimate of 18,000 total annual backover injuries.
The leading cause of fatalities for workers in work zones is being run over or backed over by vehicles. While we often worry about construction workers being killed by motorists, road workers working behind the barriers in the work zone are at equal risk of being killed by construction vehicles due to their large “blind spots.” Each month, at least one worker is killed by being backed over by a construction vehicle, often a dump truck. A commercial backover incident can occur, for example, when a backing vehicle strikes a worker who is standing, walking, or kneeling behind the vehicle. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 70 workers died from backover incidents in 2011. These kinds of incidents can occur in different ways. On Jun. 18, 2009, an employee was working inside a work zone wearing his reflective safety vest. A dump truck operating in the work zone backed up and struck the employee with the rear passenger side wheels. The employee was killed. The dump truck had an audible back up alarm and operating lights (OSHA Inspection Number 313225377). On Jun. 9, 2010, an employee was standing on the ground in front of a loading dock facing into the building while a tractor trailer was backing into the same dock. The trailer crushed the employee between the trailer and the dock (OSHA Inspection Number 314460940). In October 2006, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recorded that a 28-year-old laborer was backed over by a tack truck while working as a flagger on an asphalt resurfacing job in a residential roadway work zone. The victim was standing with his back to the reversing tack truck when a dump truck driver attempted to warn him by waving his arms. The tack truck struck the victim; the driver thought he had passed over a manhole cover and continued backing. The tack truck driver stopped when he saw the dump truck driver running and waving his arms in his mirror. Both drivers found the victim at the front of the tack truck lying face down on a man-hole cover on the ground (NIOSH 2007). Between 1992 and 2009, NIOSH and State partners investigated 36 deaths of workers killed by backing construction vehicles or equipment on roadway construction worksites through the Fatality Assessment and Control Evaluation (FACE) Program.
Backover accidents can happen for a variety of reasons. Drivers may not be able to see a worker in their blind spot. Workers may not hear backup alarms because of other worksite noises or because the alarms are not functioning. A spotter assisting one truck may not see another truck behind him. Workers riding on vehicles may fall off and get backed over. Drivers may assume that the area is clear and not look in the direction of travel. Sometimes, it is unclear why a worker was in the path of a backing vehicle.
Many solutions exist to mitigate the risk of backover incidents. Drivers can use a spotter to help them back up their vehicles. Video cameras with in-vehicle display monitors can give drivers a view of what is behind them. Proximity detection devices, such as radar and sonar, can alert drivers to objects that are behind them. Tag-based systems can inform drivers when other employees are behind the vehicle and can alert employees when they walk near a vehicle equipped to communicate with the tag worn by the employee. On some work sites, employers can create internal traffic control plans, which tell the drivers where to drive and can reduce the need to back up. In some cases, internal traffic control plans can also be used to separate employees on foot from operating equipment. Training is another tool to prevent backover incidents. Blind spots behind and around vehicles are not immediately obvious to employees on foot. By training employees on where those blind spots are and how to avoid being in them, employers can prevent some backover incidents. One component of this training can include putting employees who will be working around vehicles in the driver's seat to get a feel for where the blind spots are and what, exactly, the drivers can see. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) several blind spot diagrams that can help explain what drivers of various large trucks can see.
As such, one of skill will appreciate that a safety system is needed that will (i) operate automatically, regardless of distraction or error by the driver or the backover victim; (ii) operate unaffected by the blindspots that block the driver's view or background noise that block audible alarms for the driver or the backover victim; (iii) operate through an external activation, intentional or unintentional, by the backover victim; and/or (iv) remove driver discretion by causing the vehicle to stop upon activation of the safety system. Moreover, one of skill will appreciate a safety system that provides a novel and non-obvious solution to a level of safety's Hierarchy of Protection which is a part of the safety law that mandates strict hierarchy of protection mechanisms. One of skill appreciates the importance of this hierarchy and that hazards must follow a strict hierarchical order of being “engineered out”, and if not engineered out, then they must be “guarded”, and if not engineered out or guarded, then they must have a “warning”. As such, one of skill will appreciate the value of the systems taught herein as a “guard” which actually supersedes the value of the traditional “warnings” that include the audible backup alarms in current use. Accordingly, the devices taught herein are expected to be mandated on vehicles, if for no other reason, due to their importance and criticality to the hierarchical level of “warning” in the Hierarchy of Protection.